Mysuru: Police swooped on a massive thieving network and managed to arrest 157 thieves involved in more than 200 theft cases over last eight months thereby giving citizens a major relief.

Disclosing the details of the massive police crackdown to mediapersons during a press meet, city police commissioner B Dayanand informed that the city police arrested 157 thieves involved in 207 cases of theft and recovered goods valued at around Rs 2.5 crores. The goods include 4.5 kgs of gold, 8 kgs of silver, 60 mobile phones, 102 two wheelers, 3 cars, 2 auto rickshaws, one lorry and 2 laptops. The police also recovered cash amounting to Rs 12.83 lakhs from the accused.

With these arrests, police solved one case of murder, 3 cases of dacoity, 27 cases of extortion, 32 cases of chain snatching and 4 cases of house robbery. Apart from the above they also managed to solve 2 cases of theft involving maids/servants and 25 ordinary theft cases.

Thefts were carried out in Narasimharaja, Metagalli, Kuvempunagar, Vijayanagar, Devaraja, Saraswathipuram, Nazarbad, Mandi, Krishnaraja, Vidyaranyapuram, Ashokapuram, Lashkar, Udayagiri and VV Puram police station limits according to the information given by the city crime branch police.

The police commissioner handed over gold, silver ornaments and two wheelers seized during the raid to respective owners on the occasion.

Multiple theft cases including several chain snatching incidents gave both the public and the police sleepless nights. The police force came under severe attack for not cracking down on the thieving network when thefts occurred in quick succession in the last couple of months. With this major swoop down, the police and citizens can now heave a sigh of relief for sure.